In the underground fight world, a man with everything given to him goes to find his destiny and another who’s life has always been about fighting goes to find his as well.
Written by Craig Davidson and Andrew Thomas Hunt and directed by Andrew Thomas Hunt, this drama focuses on the world of underground fighting with focus on two specific fighters and their family. The story here takes absolutely forever to actually get going, so much so that is eventually feels like two stories running at the same time that deal with people with different types of family issues. The film takes much too long to get to the point, thus losing the interest before it gets anywhere. For some reason, a drug and alcohol binge takes an inordinate amount of time and goes into hallucination territory, something that is somewhat interesting, but it doesn’t feel right for the film. Neither does a very specific scene in the gym right before that. This secondary scene gives off the impression that it was thrown in there for shock factor, but it wasn’t exactly shocking. The film has many individual story moments that work great, but they are dispersed unevenly along the runtime, making it feel a bit disjointed and like the writers threw in random things just to keep the interest going so they could make the runtime that of a feature.
The acting in this is strong though, so it should not be under-estimated. The work by Greg Hovanessian and Dempsey Bryk, as well as Greg Bryk, Noah Dalton Danby, and of course Michael Ironside (and actor who never turns in a bad performance) is good, there’s not moment where any of them doesn’t know what they are doing, and they all bring their best to the screen. Overall, this cast is what is meant when ensemble performance is thought of and brought up. Of course, a lot of folks will tune in for Ironside and while he is not a central character, he gets a decent amount of screentime and does great work with it as usual.
The effects are what we should look at next here as some of them are absolutely amazing. And there is one scene where the visual effects are just not on point and should be revised before the full release. Those who have seen the movie will know which one. The rest however is fantastic even though some of it is part of what could be considered a superfluous scene. The work on these effects is solid and shows that the whole team knew what they were doing here and how to achieve maximal oddness. The rest of the special effects, the blood and cuts and bruises from fights are done in a believable manner and work quite well on screen.
The Fight Machine is a film that could have used some trimming and some more decisive direction. Overall, the acting is solid and the effects on point, but these two aspects are just not enough to save the film in the long run. Yes, some scenes are great and well done, but the film as a whole comes off uneven and too long.
Fantasia International Film Festival 2022 runs from July 14th to August 3rd, 2022